Personally I hope for Deaf foster and adoptive parents for deaf children.
Sent from my iPod touch using AllDeaf
Hi, my name is Lois and I'm hearing. I am learning sign language and need help interaction with Deaf community. I am a foster parent and would like to become a parent to a deaf child.
If you adopt a deaf child, you just want to make the deaf child be like the hearing person with CI or hearing aids. Then you would not sign to the child and make the child be oral. It is up to the deaf child only. I don't like a hearing parent making the decision when you and the other parents never understand deafness and not getting it. You would make the deaf child suffer and frustrated if the child has to go through oral mainstream schools. Being in a hearing family and the mainstream school can make the deaf child be left out a lot. Also in the public school with no ASL interpreter, he or she will not be able to get good grades like A or B. The grades will either be C or D or F.
That is why we need to have Deaf parents being able to adopt a d/Deaf child.
I want the deaf child to be happy, not have to put up being unhappy when being forced to do what the hearing people want him or her.
I was very happy being deaf from birth to almost 9 years old. But when I went to oral mainstream schools, I was very frustrated and unhappy. The teachers and the principal don't give a sh*t. I was mad. I finally told the principal in high school that I want to learn ASL and to have an ASL interpreter so that I can understand what is going on. Same with my family who were hearing and they never want to learn to sign ASL. My mother kept telling me that I speak so well and that I understood them much better but for me to follow what they said. I was always lost all the time. If they had signed, then we would both be communicating half way between signing and speaking.
That is why I think it is important that d/Deaf child should be with the Deaf parent(s) who can sign to the child.